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RUSKIN, JOHN. 



will be fewer attempts to establish philanthropic 

 hospitals. If they will remember that " a flower 

 is to be watched as it grows, in its association 

 with the earth, the air, and the dew; its leaves 

 are to be seen as they expand in the sunshine; 

 its colors as they embroider the field or illumine 

 the forest," there will be fewer efforts to transplant 

 earth's children to social hotbeds. This is the 

 present problem, and if Ruskin's fidelity and faith 

 remain and overbalance his passionate unwisdom 

 in their application, it will be well for the thou- 

 sands to whom his prolific brain has spoken. 



Here let Ruskin present his own explanation 

 and apology. He says, in Prseterita: "Often in 

 my other books, and now once for all and finally 

 here, I have to pray my readers. to note that this 

 continually increasing arrogance was not founded 

 on vanity in me, but on sorrow. There is a vast 

 difference, there is all the difference, between the 

 vanity of displaying one's own faculties and the 



frief that other people do not use their own. 

 'anity would have led me to continue writing 

 and drawing what every one praised, and disci- 

 plining my own already practiced hands into finer 

 dexterities. But I had no thought but of learning 

 more and teaching what truth I knew, assuredly 

 then and ever since, for the student's sake, not 

 my own fame's." 



A notable instance of the strange inconsistencies 

 of perception and emotion which characterized 

 Ruskin's mind is seen in his essay on War, in the 

 volume entitled The Crown of Wild Olive. In the 

 opening paragraphs he says: "All the pure and 

 noble arts of peace are founded on war; no great 

 art ever yet rose on earth but among a nation 

 of soldiers." After quoting Egypt and Greece as 

 evidences of the truth of his statement, he says: 

 " You are to remember, in passing to the next 

 phase of history, that though you must have war 

 to produce art, you must also have much more 

 than war, namely, an art instinct or genius in the 

 people ; and that, though all the talent for painting 

 in the world won't make painters of you unless 

 you have the gift for fighting as well, you may 

 have the gift for fighting and none for painting. 

 ' It may be so,' I can suppose that a philanthro- 

 pist might exclaim. ' Perish then the arts, if they 

 can flourish only at such a cost. What worth 

 is there in toys of canvas and stone if compared 

 to the joy and peace of artless domestic life? ' And 

 the answer is: Truly, in themselves, none. But as 

 expressions of the highest state of the human 

 spirit their worth is infinite. As results they may 

 be worthless, but as signs they are above price. 

 For it is an assured fact that, whenever the facul- 

 ties of men are at their fullness, they must express 

 themselves in art; and to say that a state is with- 

 out such an expression is to say that it is sunk 

 from its proper level of manly nature. So that, 

 when I tell you that war is the foundation of all 

 the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation 

 of all the high virtues and faculties of men. It 

 was very strange to me to discover this, and very 

 dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable 

 fact. The common notion that peace and the vir- 

 tues of civil life flourished together I found to be 

 wholly untenable. Peace and the vices of life only 

 flourish together. We talk of peace and learning 

 and of peace and plenty and of peace and civiliza- 

 tion, but I found that those were not the words 

 which the Muse of History coupled together; that 

 on her lips the words were peace and sensuality, 

 peace and selfishness, peace and corruption, peace 

 and death. I found, in brief, that all great nations 

 learned their truth of word and strength of 

 thought in war; that they were nourished in war 

 and wasted by peace, taught by war and deceived 



by peace, trained by war and betrayed by peace 

 in a word, that they were born in war and expired 

 in peace. Yet now note carefully, in the second 

 place, it is not all war of which this can be said. 

 It is not the ravage of a barbarian wolf flock nor 

 the habitual restlessness and rapine of mountain- 

 eers, as on the old borders of Scotland; nor the 

 occasional struggle of a strong, peaceful nation for 

 its life, as in the wars of the Swiss with Austria; 

 nor the contest of merely ambitious nations for 

 extent of power, as in the wars of France under 

 Napoleon or the just terminated war in America 

 [the civil war in the United States]. None of 

 these forms of war build anything but tombs. 

 But the creative and foundational war is that in 

 which the natural instincts of self-defense are 

 sanctified by the nobleness of the institutions and 

 purity of the households which they are appointed 

 to defend. To such war as this all men are burn ; 

 in such war as this any man may happily die; 

 and forth from such war as this have arisen 

 throughout the extent of past ages all the highest 

 sanctities and virtues of humanity." 



Ruskin was addressing the men of the Royal 

 Military Academy at Woolwich. In closing, after 

 pleading with them to live clean and manly lives, 

 and after apostrophizing the mothers, wives, and 

 lovers of these men, he says: "But truly, if it 

 might be, I, for one, would fain join in the ca- 

 dence of hammer strokes that should beat swords 

 into plowshares; and that this can not be is not 

 the fault of us men. It is your fault, wholly 

 yours. Only by your command or by your per- 

 mission can any contest take place among us. 

 And the real, final reason for all the poverty, 

 misery, and rage of battle throughout Europe is 

 simply that you women, however good, however 

 religious, however self-sacrificing for those you 

 love, are too selfish and too thoughtless to take 

 pains for any creature out of your own imme- 

 diate circles. You fancy that you are sorry for 

 the pains of others. Now I just tell you this, 

 that if the usual course of war, instead of unroof- 

 ing peasants' houses and ravaging peasants' fields, 

 merely broke china upon your own drawing-room 

 tables, no war in civilized countries would last a 

 week. I tell you more, that at whatever moment 

 you choose to put a period to war you could do it 

 with less trouble than you take any day to go out 

 to dinner. You know, or at least you might know 

 if you would think, that every battle you hear of 

 has made many widows and orphans. We have 

 none of us, truly, heart enough to mourn with 

 these. But at least we might put on the outer 

 symbols of mourning with them. Let but every 

 Christian lady who has conscience toward God 

 vow that she will mourn, at least outwardly, for 

 his killed creatures. Your praying is useless and 

 your churchgoing mere mockery of God if you 

 have not plain obedience in you enough for this. 

 Let every lady in the upper classes of civilized 

 Europe simply vow that while any cruel war pro- 

 ceeds she will wear black, a mute's black, with no 

 jewel, no ornament, no excuse for or evasion into 

 prettiness I tell you again, no war would last a 

 week. And. lastly, you women of England are all 

 now shrieking with one voice you and your 

 clergymen together because you hear of your 

 Bibles being attacked. If you choose to obey your 

 Bibles, you will never care who attacks them. 

 It is just because you never fulfill a single down 

 right precept of the Book that you are so careful 

 for its credit, and just because you don't care to 

 obey its whole words that you are so particular 

 about the letters of them. The Bible tells yon to 

 drc*s plainly, and you are mad for finery: Iho 

 Bible tells you to have pity on the poor, and you 



